The invention is primarily intended for suspension of rollers in bearings for big and heavy objects and for transferring large forces. More specifically the present invention relates to a support bearing assembly for supporting a first member, such as the hull of a ship, for rotation about a mainly vertical axis relative to a second member, such as an anchoring member through which a drilling rig extends. The anchoring member is anchored in a desired position in the bottom of the sea by means of a plurality of anchoring lines. The support bearing permits adjustment of the ship's hull relative to the anchoring member and position the hull optimally relative to external forces such as currents, waves, or drifting ice.
Devices of this type are generally subjected to heavy static loads, and the relative movements occuring in the bearing are comparatively slow and of short duration. As the size and direction of the load varies, a sliding movement in the contact between roller and race track will easily result, and this will cause a swift wear of the bearing device. Due to inevitable manufacturing and assembly tolerances and due to material deformation caused by the load, problems will also occur in obtaining an even distribution of the load on all rollers. A further problem is to avoid local overloads at excentric and uneven load on one of the members. With a device in accordance with the present invention sliding movements are avoided, a desired even load distribution is achieved and overloading of separate rollers is avoided also in a heavily loaded device of very large dimensions.
The bearing will also be free from play at normal operation.
This is according to the invention obtained thereby that the supporting device is given the features defined in the accompanying claim 1.
The invention can preferably be used for supporting a cylindrical anchoring member for an oil drilling ship located in the ship's hull, whereby the hull will be rotatable about the anchoring member, which when drilling is performed will be attached to the sea bottom. The drill is thereby preferably arranged through the anchoring member, and the ship's hull can without the necessity of being reanchored be adjusted in a desired position with respect to e.g. currents, waves or drifting ice.